Google Fills In North Korea Map, From Subways to Gulags

With the help of "citizen cartographers," Google Maps has filled in some of North Korea's streets and prison camps. The WSJ's Evan Ramstad gives a preview of some places the world's most reclusive nation would rather keep a secret.

By

Evan Ramstad

Updated Jan. 29, 2013 5:09 p.m. ET

SEOUL—For the hundreds of millions of people who use Google Inc.'s online maps, North Korea has become a bit less of a cypher.

On Tuesday, the company revised its Google Maps application to add information for North Korea—from naming streets to marking the outlines of prison camps—beginning to flesh out a national map that has been largely unannotated since Google started providing maps online and for mobile devices eight years ago.

The new information for the North Korea map was the result of a so-called crowdsourcing effort, as people interested in the country contributed names of streets, districts, buildings and landmarks as part of a Google development program called Map Maker.

The updated view on North Korea also highlights areas where the country allegedly operates gulag-like work camps, believed to be some of the largest and most inhumane prisons in the world. Brown shading stands out against the light beige background, instantly imparting to a user of Google Maps the enormous size of the prisons.

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The release came just three weeks after Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, visited North Korea in a highly publicized trip with former American diplomat Bill Richardson. Mr. Schmidt encouraged officials there to make the Internet available to its citizens and end its attempts to restrict information. A company spokesman said there was no connection between the visit and the new map.

"This data has been in Map Maker for a while now, but it commonly takes the Map Maker community a few years to generate enough high-quality data to make something that works in Google Maps," the spokesman said. He added that Google has relied on "citizen cartographers" to help it create maps in 150 countries and have made huge contributions in places where governments have done little mapping, such as Afghanistan.

In a blog post, Google said it determined the work on North Korea had reached a level of detail and credibility where it could be incorporated into the Google Map product.

Even so, the new effort serves to highlight how much remains unknown or unconfirmed about North Korea.

The new Google Maps version of North Korea also has far less information than files available through other private efforts using a different Google product, a satellite image program, Google Earth, which must be downloaded separately.

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Google Map image of North Korea.
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Curtis Melvin, who has spent years leading a crowdsourcing effort to map North Korea using Google Earth, said he was surprised to learn of the separate work for Google Maps. "It's not even a fraction of what I've already published," he said. Mr. Melvin's work, for example, shows the outlines of what his collaborators have said are several more prison camps than are visible on the Google Maps version.

Mr. Melvin, who publishes a website called North Korean Economy Watch, recently collaborated with 38 North, a North Korea website operated by the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, on a digital atlas of North Korea. He has relied on information provided by people who have visited the country or former citizens who defected from it.

Jayanth Mysore, a Google senior product manager, wrote in a blog post that the North Korea map is "not perfect" and added Google encourages people "to continue helping us improve the quality of these maps."

Hwang Min-woo, a 28-year-old South Korean who contributed to the North Korea map, said he began working on it after trying to use Google Maps on a trip to Laos four years ago and finding it inadequate.

"I thought if I could fill in information on North Korea, it might be useful in an emergency or a tragedy if Google can provide a map for aid agencies," Mr. Hwang said.He said he used information from maps of the North on a website run by the South Korean government.

Within hours of the release of the updated map, Internet users had begun to put their stamp on it. The Google tags for landmarks—including prison camps—began to fill with user reviews, ranging from apparently factual accounts of life in the camps to faux-glowing reviews. "After staying a week in the rather fantastic Buckchang Gulag, I had high expectations for the Hoeryong Gulag. I figured Gulag was some sort of chain," read one.

Google's content policy prohibits comments that involve "impersonation or deceptive behavior." "We strive to create a platform where people can express their opinions about places both positive and negative," a spokesman said. "We understand this may occasionally yield commentary that is sarcastic or makes some people uncomfortable. We encourage users to flag content they feel is inappropriate or violates our content policy."

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